Kongo Kingdom. When King Afonso I (1509–1542) died at the age of almost eighty, he left a multigenerational group of successors behind him to contend for the throne. His son Pedro I Nkanga a Mvemba ruled briefly, until being forced to take sanctuary in a chapel by Afonso’s half brother, Francisco I Nkumbi a Mpudi, whose similarly brief reign ended in 1545 when Afonso’s grandson Diogo I Mpudi a Nzinga defeated him.
In 1550, Diogo placed Pedro on trial for planning treason against him; the judicial procedure of this trial is an essential source for understanding how succession was conducted in Kongo in the mid-sixteenth century. The character of this dispute demonstrates how far the kingdom had advanced toward centralization of authority since the early sixteenth century.
When Afonso arrived to the throne, the monarchy was practically elective, perhaps through an early constitution of Kongo that provided for the nomination of the ruler by the powerful autonomous aristocracy of Kongo’s original loose federation. Afonso owed his own authority, he wrote in 1514, to the good offices of the Mwene (ruler of) Mbata, the most powerful member of the federation.
Later, sometime before 1529, Afonso wrote to Portugal saying that he could not designate a successor without the approval of the Mwene Mbata. Yet if Mbata, or Soyo, possibly another early member of the federation, played a part in selecting kings earlier, they had no obvious involvement in the mid-sixteenth century.
Instead, Diogo depended heavily on his capacity to assign officials to those provinces of the Kongo kingdom that were in his power: Vunda, Mpemba, Nsundi, Mpangu, and other lesser ones. Yet it was not always simple to make the nominations that were theoretically in his gift, for he proceeded extremely slowly to replace his predecessors’ chosen officials, and even five years after taking the throne, he had not entirely filled these positions with his allies. Pedro’s scheme, in reality, hinged around persuading one or another of these appointed authorities to revolt against Diogo in his favor.
In the end, however, Diogo managed to force all to swear that they would never support anyone of Pedro’s geração, a Portuguese term that probably translated the Kikongo word kanda, which in turn referred to a large and complex faction united by kinship, clientage, and other bonds for political means.
By the mid-1550s, however, Diogo was firmly in charge of Kongo Kingdom and its foundation. He had led the church out of the hands of the Jesuits, whose mission between 1548 and 1555 had intended to take both the church and the Portuguese resident community under their (and the Portuguese crown’s) authority. In 1553, he obtained the authority to designate a commander of the Portuguese against the rights of the Portuguese throne.
He was worried, as was Afonso, with rising Portuguese commerce with Ndongo, but he extended the nation. He cemented authority over Kiangala along the coast, and under his tutelage, Kongo acquired power all along the south boundary of the country and into the east as well. When Diogo died in 1561, there was a brief succession struggle between two of his sons.
One son, called Afonso II, ruled until being ousted by his brother Bernardo I (1561–1567). During Bernardo’s rule, members of competing kandas, probably related to Afonso II, conspired against him, and he faced one open insurrection, headed by a discontented nobleman who started out in Mpangu and also captured Nsundi. Some of the Portuguese community also engaged in this uprising but were slain and their property confiscated.
Not all the Portuguese joined in, and those who stayed faithful were still secure. Bernardo exhibited an interest in expansion to the east, for early seventeenth-century folklore stated that he perished battling the “Jagas,” who seem to have inhabited the vicinity of the Kwango. The fact that his successor, his uncle and Diogo’s son, Henrique I, also perished in the east (fighting against the Tio kingdom) the very next year, 1568, plainly implies a strong movement towards the Kwango, and equally strong opposition. Henrique’s death appears to have touched off a succession battle of tremendous consequence.
Henrique left the capital and civil government of Kongo in the hands of Alvaro Nimi a Lukeni lua Mvemba, the son of his wife by a previous spouse, when he moved to the east. After Henrique’s death, Álvaro managed to be named king Álvaro I, on the premise that Henrique left no issue of his own. At this moment, the “Jagas” attacked Kongo. The origin and character of the Jagas is a controversial subject in Kongo historiography. The most precise tale places their origin near the Kwango, though historians have postulated various locations.
They were described as rootless cannibals who assaulted the nation through Mbata, sacking Mbanza Kongo and forcing Alvaro to an island in the Zaire River. Some historians have taken this account seriously and say that they were from the Kwango area, displaced by conflict there. Others perceive a local insurrection behind the Jaga movement, maybe in favor of the Mwene Mbata, who had a claim to Kongo’s throne should the royal line ever die out. Given that Lvaro’s accession to the throne marked the end of one dynasty and the beginning of another, a rebellion from Mbata is not out of the question.
Whatever the reason, Lvaro’s terrible situation inspired him to seek Portuguese assistance in restoring him to the kingdom, assistance that arrived from So Tomé in 1571 under the command of Francisco de Gouveia Sottomaior. He and his band of 600 soldiers did eventually restore Lvaro to the throne, but at a cost.
The price was, among other things, permitting Portugal to control the mines of precious metal (none was found), to colonize Luanda island and probably to collect tribute from the shell money (nzimbu) mines there, and the submission of the Portuguese residents in Kongo to an official appointed by the king of Portugal. lvaro most likely also swore a symbolic vassalage to the Portuguese monarch, though this was of little value.